But you don’t get to issue the warning based on possible future actions.
If i actually ignored the instruction, and engaged in behavior contrary to the instructions, that would be one thing. But i have not.
To be honest, even if i had actually written “I’m going to keep insulting him, and I don’t care what you do about it,” i still believe that it would not have been appropriate to issue the warning until after i actually insulted him. After all, if i really were going to do it, it would be only a matter of time.
I’d also like to ask you a question.
Do you believe that it is appropriate to for a single moderator, based on a single instance of rule-breaking, to tell a poster that he can only reply to another poster in the Pit?
If so, how long does this rule last? Am i forbidden to ever engage with dalej42 anywhere outside the Pit, ever again? Is it thread specific? Topic specific? Is there a time limit?
Can you see the problem of one person making a snap, blanket rule like this?
If you wanted to know the specifics of the instruction you could have contacted Idle Thoughts by PM. No matter how wrong you thought the instructions were, you weren’t entitled to declare you weren’t going to follow them in that thread.
Why don’t you answer the main question that i asked:
Do you believe that it is appropriate to for a single moderator, based on a single instance of rule-breaking, to tell a poster that he can only reply to another poster in the Pit?
FWIW, I think the warning was justified, and that that sort of direction should be given more, not less, often; moderating by restrictive notes is better than moderating with a warn-first approach.
I don’t know why you keep bringing this up, I wasn’t telling you that you were forbidden to continue posting in that thread or banning you from replying to dale in that thread. I didn’t tell you “stop posting in this thread” or “stop replying to dale in this thread” (which mods do have the right to do, by the way; it’s been done many times and I personally have done it a few times)…
…my note was only saying “don’t insult dale in this thread or call him names” and to take it to the Pit if you want to use insulting terms.
If you’re parsing my response to suggest that i was definitely going to ignore your instructions, isn’t it also reasonable for me to parse your instructions as saying that i was not to respond to dale at all again that that thread?
Here’s what you said:
It’s worth noting, given the number of people who have jumped in to defend the idea of restricting my participation in that thread, that i was not the only one who parsed your instructions in this way.
If memory serves, we have in the past used similar responses to mod instructions as grounds for an instaban. Like you said, if someone plainly states their intention to violate the rules, then it’s only a matter of time until they do it. So why wait?
I’m not sure how you’re getting from, “If you feel you have to say pretty much anything to dale, you’re probably better off doing it in the Pit since you can’t seem to help speaking insulting to him in here,” to “You are forbidden to talk to dale anywhere except the Pit.” What Idle said wasn’t an instruction, it was some pretty solid advice to someone who doesn’t have a good handle on his temper around certain other posters.
Okay, I get where the misunderstanding is coming from.
That was not a directive. That was not a “stop posting in this thread/stop talking to dale in this thread” official statement. I meant it as “if you can’t stop yourself from insulting others, then don’t bother posting in here” type of comment.
If a mod is giving you an actual mod instruction, they will make it clear, “Stop posting in this thread” or “Do not reply to x, again” or “Don’t continue this hijack”.
Because it hasn’t happened yet, has it? The fact that you believe something to be inevitable does not make it inevitable, and your belief about possible future actions should not form the basis of punishment for actions that have not yet occurred.
I mean, i think, given board history, that it’s pretty much inevitable that some moderators are going to make really stupid moderating decisions, but i try to at least wait until they make them before pointing them out.
So there was only one instruction, which was not to throw insults around outside the Pit.
Again, please demonstrate where i have disobeyed that instruction in the time period since it was given.
And yet the reason i was warned was precisely because of a response i made under the assumption (apparently shared by others) that i was being told not to engage with dalej42 anymore, at all, outside of the Pit. That is precisely why i indicated my disinclination to follow the instruction.
Good idea. Maybe i’ll blog about some pigeon eggs or something. That should stupefy me sufficiently that moderating decisions will not raise my blood pressure.
Anyway, i’m done here. I remain unconvinced that expressing the intention of possibly doing something at some undetermined time in the future is the same as actually doing something. I would also argue that post-hoc moderator rationalizations about all of the ***other ***things i ***could ***have been warned for are little more than self-serving bullshit. But now i’ll move on. You can leave the thread open, or not.
ATMB is for the polite and civil discussion of board issues. I realize that people who come in here are often upset and may not be on their best behavior, so I don’t tend to enforce those rules too heavy-handedly. However, ATMB is not the place to simply bitch about the moderation here, and you are way over the line with these types of comments.
Keep this kind of thing up and you’ll earn yourself a warning for your behavior in this forum.
mhendo, you’ve consistently said in this thread that it was a single instance and so forth.
But it’s not. You’ve shown the pattern in the past of insulting others and then getting upset about it - via this thread and private messages - with moderators in the past. You have six warnings since the current system was put in place. This includes two since your suspension. There’s a pattern and it’s not a good one.